By TED MILLER, P-I COLUMNIST

Published 10:00 pm, Monday, June 11, 2007

I did it for the first time Monday without even really thinking about it. I checked the American League standings to find out where the Mariners sit in the wild-card race.

It felt naïve. It felt premature. Heck, there's nearly a month until the All-Star break.

It also felt kinda good. Perhaps, finally, we'll have a summer of baseball consequence around here after three years of irrelevancy.

By the way, after nipping the Indians 8-7 Monday, the Mariners are one game behind the Tigers. And the Yankees (spit, spit), winners of six in a row, are lurking.

During spring training, most folks projected misery onto this season and were making like Robespierre and eagerly volunteering to raise the guillotine blade over manager Mike Hargrove's and GM Bill Bavasi's noggins. A six-game losing streak in April didn't exactly provoke calls for mercy.

So, seeing that the Mariners are presently eight games over .500 and in second place in the AL West -- hey, is this the best division in baseball or what! -- shouldn't that inspire at least muted praise for the organization's odd couple?

For Hargrove, perhaps. For Bavasi, not so much.

The Mariners' improvement compared with a year ago can't be attributed to Bavasi's offseason maneuvers. Of the three new starting pitchers, Miguel Batista, Jeff Weaver and Horacio Ramirez, only Batista has been fairly consistent -- and that's a charitable take for a guy with a 5.48 ERA.

Weaver has been a bust. Ramirez wasn't throwing much better and is now on the disabled list, where he's spent much of his career.

The new bats have been mostly punchless. Jose Guillen has been adequate, his .755 OPS (on-base plus slugging percentage) ranking seventh among AL right fielders, while designated hitter Jose Vidro has been less than mediocre (.703 OPS, at least five fewer extra-base hits than any other regular).

The reason the Mariners rank second in the league in hitting is the returning players -- Ichiro, Kenji Johjima, Adrian Beltre, Jose Lopez and Yuniesky Betancourt -- are swinging well (though it's notable that the offense ranks only sixth in runs and sixth in team OPS). Making up for inconsistent starting pitching is one of the league's best bullpens, led by shutdown closer J.J. Putz, who figures to shortly earn his first All-Star invite.

As for Hargrove, he sometimes makes you scratch your head, but the players seem like they are playing harder, smarter and more confidently than last year. The skipper is leading and the clubhouse is following.

They are finding ways to win instead of throwing up on themselves. On June 12, 2006, the Mariners were 9-18 in games decided by one or two runs. A year later, they are 12-9 in such contests, including four consecutive one-run victories.

Moreover, guys are throwing pies at each other -- see Putz delivering a shaving cream facial to Sean Green to honor Green's first major league victory Saturday.

"Two years ago, we couldn't have done this," a seemingly giddy Putz told the P-I's John Hickey, after describing his offseason work on a sneaky "ninja crawl."

"It says good things about what's happening here."

It's been a long time since anybody said that. Or said it and had anyone believe him, recall the stupefied looks that greeted Hargrove's preseason pronouncement that this was a playoff team.

So did the winning change the vibe, or did the vibe change and then produce winning? Hard to say. But seeing a guy like Putz assert his outgoing personality feels like a positive whether the egg or chicken came first.

Just about every media outlet during the preseason wrote about how miserable and sometimes toxic the Mariners' clubhouse has been in recent years, pointing at a leadership void that developed as many of the franchise's beloved veterans -- Bone, Edgar, Boone, etc. -- wandered into the sunset.

Maybe that is changing. Again, hard to say. It's still early.

Some folks mock the media for overvaluing nebulous ideas such as team chemistry and clubhouse/locker room leadership. Almost none of these contrarians are coaches or athletes, but it's not invalid to assert that leadership and chemistry are general and often unpredictable concepts. Wrote one of the bloggers at USS Mariner who exclusively relies on statistical analysis, "We don't know anything about how things like chemistry effects (sic) player performance."

It's true that we can't statistically measure how a good work environment affects productivity. Or how Greg Maddux has helped Jake Peavy's development in San Diego. Or why certain teams seem to run hard to first on every ball in play. Or how a veteran player undermining a manager might affect the win-loss column. Or why certain great players never win championships, no matter the quality of their supporting cast.

Therefore, we won't dwell on projecting a budding culture shift, just as we won't dwell on the dearth of preseason projections, sabermetric or otherwise, that had the Mariners winning 92 games.

The roster, particularly the starting pitching, remains flawed. It's too early to start eyeballing the standings.